Kids stand up for principals

Movie star Michael Clarke Duncan, a young funeral director, 29 White Castle fast-food managers and the consul general of Croatia were among the 1,755 people dubbed Principal for a Day in Chicago public schools Thursday.

At King College Preparatory High School on the South Side, students looked at a 1975 yearbook photo of Duncan--who went on to star with Tom Hanks in the 1999 movie "The Green Mile"--that showed a goofy sophomore sporting a full head of hair and a huge, toothy grin.

Then they looked up at the real thing: 6 feet 5 inches tall, 300 pounds and sporting a shaved head.

"It's a very ugly picture," Duncan told the riveted audience.

Duncan pointed to the school's football coach Lonnie Williams, as "the greatest man you'll ever want to know," and who served as a cornerstone in his own life.

Duncan remembered how persistent the coach was in pressuring him to play football. But the tall, skinny boy refused--basketball was his sport. Besides, Duncan remembered, his mother wouldn't let him play football lest he get hurt.

Many of the tough circumstances the successful actor experienced seemed to touch a chord with the students. He grew up blocks from the school, with a single mother who cleaned houses for a living. He ran from gangs.

He told students he spent one Christmas Eve homeless and for two years he dug ditches for Peoples Gas.

"It made me stronger," his voice boomed. "It made me want to succeed."

When Duncan finished with, "Go Jaguars," referring to the school's mascot, the students hollered and gave him a standing ovation.

Coach Williams said he was proud of his protege, who flew in from Los Angeles for the event.

"That lets me know that he is still real," said the coach.

In another vein altogether--but just as riveting for the kids--funeral director Brooke Benjamin returned to her alma mater, Mather High School, in the West Ridge neighborhood to regale students with grisly details of death and decomposition.

"It's creepy ... but death is my living now," said Benjamin, 34, who described herself as morbid and urged the students to find careers that reflect their interests, no matter how bizarre.

Strangely enough, the first funeral Benjamin ever attended was one for her principal at Mather, who died when she was a freshman.

But the students were far less concerned about Benjamin's connection to the school than her observations about how dead people smell ("fishy"), the consistency of cremated remains ("kind of like kitty litter") and how long it takes for bodies to turn into skeletons (five to seven years).

Benjamin, manager for the Cremation Society of Illinois, told the classes she didn't have the eye-hand coordination needed to be a great embalmer. She described situations where she unearthed buried bodies and discovered suicide notes that revealed horrifying family secrets.

"There is nothing more certain than a dead body," she said.

Students peppered her with questions about ghosts and funeral costs. She said her job doesn't scare her, but sometimes makes her sad. And when she got up to leave one class for another, students begged her to stay.

One English teacher stared at Benjamin with wide eyes as her students squirmed, laughed nervously and covered their faces.

Along with science and star power, the day is designed to forge relationships between the business community and city schools. Many groups end up adopting schools where employees tutor and mentor students regularly. It doesn't always work. At Albany Park Multicultural Academy, Principal Mary Lee Taylor said she usually dreads this yearly event. "Boy, I've had some dillies over the years," Taylor said, recounting business owners who show up for a few hours, promise to help the school and then never return.

The appearance of three gun-toting federal agents, however, saved this year's event, the principal said. The agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives impressed Taylor's students as "very macho."

Elsewhere, Michelle Obama made her third appearance as a principal in a Chicago school. Obama, wife of U.S. Senate hopeful Barack Obama and community relations director for the University of Chicago Hospitals, said her purpose in visiting Canter Middle School was to show students their connection to "this big old hospital" in their neighborhood.

Mayor Richard Daley appeared at his adopted school, the West Side's Orr High School.

Celebrities were among those who took part in this year's program, Daley said, "but I don't think they are the ones we should really acknowledge." He saluted "people from all walks of life" who participated at schools across the city.